Residents of a fishing village near Hong Kong said that as many as 20 people had been killed by paramilitary police in an unusually violent clash that marked an escalation in the widespread social protests that have roiled the Chinese countryside. Villagers said that as many as 50 other residents remain unaccounted for since the shooting.

OK, let’s take the low end number of Kent State times 5.

Given the outrage over waterboarding and Abu Ghraib, will there be a proprotionate denunciation of this massacre, and the system it implies lies behind it?

Where’s the outrage? Or even a little alarm? I haven’t seen television coverage of either story yet.

If the president of Iran comes out tomorrow and declares that he is Xerxes, son of Darius, and he rejects the Greeks claims to the Peloponnese, would people galnce briefly in his direction and then return to denouncing trans-European flights of terrorists to detention centers?